


This Life I'm Leading's Driving Me Insane

by electricsheep



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Codependent Winchesters, Fluff and Humor, Impala, Incest, M/M, Sexual Tension, Sleeping in the Impala, Stitches, boredom and car games, boys on the road, total absence of sadness here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 04:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5191955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricsheep/pseuds/electricsheep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sun burns from the outside in. Sam feels like he's swimming in it, like he's living some mad fever dream. July's about to turn to August and nothing, just nothing, has altered. Not the saturated green or orange of every landscape, nor the washed-out blue of the sky against all that light. Not Dean and his sly glances and constant, unnecessary closeness, nor Sam and the thick, expectant breath that's caught in his chest. </p>
<p>They'll go mad by September.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Life I'm Leading's Driving Me Insane

**Author's Note:**

> Set over some undetermined summer where John is already dead and there's no imminent peril.
> 
> Just the boys, the car, and the road.

Twenty-eight fake IDs.

Sam counts them all, piled in his lap and spilling onto the seat. If Dean was here, he'd smack Sam upside the head and tell him to stop messing about or something. Even though Dean's basically five years old forty percent of the time.

He's bored. Twenty-four hours a day glued to Dean's side and in one lonely hour, Sam's fucking bored _._ A better man might worry about the state of his independence, but Sam knows the failings of far better men and, really, he's got bigger things, in the grand scheme of it all.

Like wraiths in town, for one. One on the sliding scale of millions.

Wraiths. Wraiths and he's bored. The sliding scale tips ever downwards; constantly spiralling relativity. But that's just Sam getting reflective and overly philosophical because he's _bored._

He plays _guess who'd die first if there was a zombie apocalypse_ with himself for five minutes but it's not as fun without Dean and he's back to square one again, thoughts in never-ending circles.

“If I was a zombie, I'd bite you first.”

That's what Dean'd said yesterday, and Sam had done a double take. “Excuse me?”

“I'd bite you first.”

“Yeah, I got that part.”

“Well, I would.”

“Why, 'cause I'd hunt your dead little ass down?”

Dean had looked at him like he was crazy. “What? No.” He'd scoffed, too. “Like you could.”

“You bet your ass I could.”

“Awful fixated on my ass today, Sammy.”

Sam had gotten eye-ache, rolling them like he was. “Funny.” And Dean had thought so, smirking to himself, looking out the window.

Stakeouts. That's what all this is; why Sam's currently sitting in the smelting heat of July in a metal hotbox sweating through his t-shirt and counting everything from his fingers to the sidewalk slabs to the fake IDs, organizing the tapes and trying to remember all the words to Midnight Rider. Yesterday they'd played the zombie game until almost midnight and promptly _both_ fallen asleep, kinda disputing the notion of a stakeout.

“So―“ Sam had gone on, later after Dean had gotten donuts—because he's hilarious like that, Sam's brother. “Why would you bite me first?”

Dean had given him this look like it was obvious, like Sam was just slow. “What am I gonna do, zombie round all on my own without you? Be boring.”

Sam had choked on his food. “You'd―you'd turn me into the undead for your entertainment?”

“Really, Sam? You sayin' you'd be cool being a zombie without me?”

“Well―I mean―”

Dean had cocked an eyebrow, looking all smug and right, so Sam had veered in another direction.

“I don't think zombies are all that aware of their situation, Dean.”

But Dean had waved it off, unmoved by Sam's impeccable logic.

And after that, even now trying to get comfortable with his back aching, boiling alive in his own skin, counting _everything_ , all Sam's been able to think about was what the fuck he'd do if Dean turned into a zombie. He'd had a weird dream where Dean took off his head and rolled it into a line of military guys like a bowling ball, picked it up and stuck it right back on again, tossing Sam a wink. Sam thumbs through the fake IDs and thinks about his brother with his skin all pale and gross, how he'd need a new license photo.

Trust Dean to give Sam a complex about fucking zombie apocalypses.

Several IDs go scattering to the void of the Impala floor, probably never to be seen again, and Dean grins at him from the passenger window where he's just appeared out of thin air to rap on the glass and scare Sam stupid.

“Which part of _stakeout_ do you think involves you banging on things?” he asks when Dean climbs in.

Except he hands Sam a blissfully cold iced coffee and earns himself instant forgiveness.

It cools him from his insides out and Sam asks, amicably enough because he's not all that bothered, “Aren't you supposed to be at the library?”

Dean shrugs off his overshirt like he's staying put for the long haul. “Knew you'd get bored without me.”

Sam neither confirms nor denies this―not that he needs to, Dean being so good at honing in on all Sam's little insecurities.

“The guy in the slacks.” Dean nods across the street. “Bet he'd be a survivor.”

“Makes you say that?”

“He's got one of those faces, like he's hiding something.”

“Unless it's a massive stash of weapons in an underground bunker somewhere, what's that got to do with anything?”

“Y'know,” Dean says and no, Sam doesn't know, and he stares blankly until Dean decides to elaborate. “Like he's got a tortured past or something, like he's hiding his―y'know. Nature. Or whatever.”

“Like an assassin?”

Dean's eyes light up. “Yeah. Why not?”

“Do assassins wear slacks? And dress shoes?” Sam asks, to be arbitrary and no other reason.

“G-Man, then.”

“Yeah, I'll give you that.”

“Girl in the green skirt, what about her?”

“Survivor,” Sam says instantly. “Looks like she could roundhouse kick a horse.”

“And then some. See those rings? DIY knuckle-duster if I ever saw one.”

“Think she's in danger?”

“Could be the mob.”

Sam nods sagely, sucking his coffee through a straw 'cause it's better that way. He stretches one arm along the back of the bench and feels the heat rolling off Dean seep into his fingertips; his brother all lazy, pliant like sun-swarm candy.

They're doing it again, getting all caught up in each other when they should be watching the apartment. Sam loses bits of himself every day but what's he gonna do? There's nothing he really wants to complain about, no one particular aspect of it all. Bad days and good days. Days when Dean's this soft and magnetic thing and days when Sam could hang him from a motel room fan with his own bootlaces and set the spin to fast. And the ones in between; long, long days they are and Sam gets stir crazy, Dean even more so.

Last Monday they drank a bottle of Cuervo and set fire to a haystack. Sam had leant shoulder to shoulder with Dean against a barn door and mouthed a grin into his temple and hadn't for one second thought that was a weird thing to do―still doesn't, not really, not if he doesn't hold it to other people’s standards.

“I'd bite you too, y'know,” Sam says.

Dean tips his head back against the seat―against Sam's fingers that curl against his neck―and gives him a slow grin. “Yeah, I know.”

And it's as simple as that, really.

  

~ 

 

“I told you, no monsters,” Dean complains, muffled under the Impala hood but boy can he still gripe even when he's got a face full of engine.

“Okay, but what about movie monsters? Cut out movies and you lose half the point of the game.”

“Monsters just makes it feel like work, or like Dad pop quizzing us.”

Sam shifts, ass digging in the plastic cooler. He's going numb on his left side but he can't be bothered to stand up. He thinks about suggesting folding chairs and imagines it, both of them camped out like two old fellas by the side of the road. All they'd need is khaki bodywarmers and more plaid than even Sam could pack in his duffle to complete the picture. Maybe a couple of trucker caps.

What he's describing in his head, Sam realizes, is Bobby, and he scoffs a laugh into his beer.

“What're you chuckling at?” Dean asks, still under the hood but some of his attention is always kept on reserve for Sam.

“Somethin' Bobby said,” he lies easily.

“That you're a damn idjit who can't fix an engine?”

“Yeah, that was it, I thought it was hilarious,” Sam deadpans.

Dean draws back, squinting a bit, wiping his forearm over his forehead. He leans both hands against the headlights, a graceful stoop that makes his spine curve. He's sweating. Sam takes him in; oil on his jeans, all of him bleached and worn from the relentless sun, endless burning thing hanging in the sky that stalks them across the country and makes Sam jittery and lazy in equal measure.

An hour ago they parked up in the shade of a bunch of picturesque, postcard-looking trees but that was an hour ago and the sun scorches a quick trail these days; there's no safe corner to hide.

Dean skips a beat, then tells him with a slanted look, “You're not allowed Bobby either.”

“You're really narrowing down our options here, man.”

“Just pick someone.”

“Fine, I got someone.”

“Female?”

“No.”

“Is he a monster?” Dean asks, narrowed eyes like he doesn't trust Sam one bit.

Sam looks up, elbows on his knees, bottle swinging. “No.” And Dean wets his lips, just a short indecipherable second where Sam forgets what they're doing before Dean clears his throat too obviously, turning back to the car.

“Is he fictional?”

“Yeah.”

By the time Sam's finished his warmed beer, Dean's onto Batman villains, and fuck if he doesn't just know all of them.

“Wait, is it even a dude?”

Sam snorts, turns into a full blown laugh; Dean's wearing oil on his face and he's flushed all over, so visibly annoyed Sam wants to make it worse.

“Not really, no.”

Dean levels him a glare and asks, monotone, “It's a fuckin' robot, isn't it?” Sam nods, still grinning. “HAL?”

“Nope.”

“Did it try to start a thermonuclear war?”

Sam tips Dean his empty bottle. “Yup.”

“Joshua.”

“Ding, ding, ding, he finally got it.”

Dean groans, straightening back out and cracking his back. “Fuck, m'getting too old for this.”

“Told you we shoulda taken her to Bobby's, and you to a chiropractor while we're at it. Your back's been a train wreck since Greeley kicked your ass.”

“That dead-hick motherfucker did not _kick my ass_.”

“He whipped your posterior? Toed your behind?”

“Sam, that is disgusting,” Dean says haughtily.

Sam snorts. “Another beer?”

Dean holds out a hand, no please or nothing, manners like a guy raised by bears. Sam stands, his own back aching a little, pulls out two blissfully cold bottles and hands one to his brother. He doesn't sit back down, perching a hip against the side of the car instead. He's waiting for Dean to crack the tops off with his ring, likes watching it for some myriad of reasons.

And Dean watches Sam back while he does it, curious shifting expression; a gentle apprehension. He hooks his middle finger over the bottle caps and Sam's shameless, utterly, the way he stares.

“Come to learn about engines?” Dean asks, soft with the barely swaying trees.

“Nah, not really.”

“Just come to gawk at me, then?”

Sam shrugs a shoulder. Dean looks down, up again, down again. All the things he can hide but his eyes always give him away; it's why Sam's better at poker even though Dean'd never admit it.

It's an endless, twisted addiction Sam's got about putting him on edge.

Dean gets back under the hood but the entire line of his shoulders is different; self-conscious, purposeful. Sam's made him like that and oh, _God_ , the sun burns from the outside in. He feels like he's swimming in it, like he's living some mad fever dream. July's about to turn to August and nothing, just _nothing,_ has altered; not the saturated green or orange of every landscape, nor the washed-out blue of the sky against all that light. Not Dean and his sly glances and constant, unnecessary closeness, nor Sam and the thick, expectant breath that's caught in his chest like a permanent addition to his physiology.

They'll go mad by September, he thinks vaguely, watching Dean's back bow, the faint notches of his spine through his thin t-shirt. Feels like he's already a few rungs short of a ladder.

“Hey, Dean.”

Dean looks up whip-quick; Sam feels like he's been punched.

“S'your turn.”

Dean bites his lip, an unconscious tic which makes it all the more appealing.

“And don't go breakin' the rules,” Sam warns him, Dean snorting a laugh and rolling his eyes, dry as a bone.

“God forbid we break any rules, huh.”

Sam blinks slowly, feels a sluggish, dead-to-rights-infatuated grin stretch across his mouth. He covers it with his fist—never good to let Dean see how dumb he makes Sam; his brother takes every advantage he gets, playing dirty like it’s the only game.

“Right, bring it on, Sammy, I got a good one.”

“Is it a monster?”

Dean presses his mouth together. “Okay, yeah.”

“It's Godzilla, isn't it?”

“Fuck you.” 

 

~

 

Dean's just about keeping the wheel steady with the flat of his wrist.

He's wearing all seven hours on the road like a carpet draped over his shoulders, slumped right down in his seat, breathing shallowly, blinking slowly.

They hit midnight twenty minutes ago; straight, dark road to nowhere cutting a vein through the landscape. The horizon looks seamless, like Dean might take them over it and just keep on going right up into the stars. Or Sam's just feeling insubstantial enough to evaporate and scatter like particles to the night.

Even with the windows down, the air feels thick and congealing. Dean found a Yardbirds tape under the back seat this morning and Sam hasn't heard it since Dad owned the Impala. It's making him ache for Dean even though he's a mere half a foot away, one of those rare nights where the tangible need to cling to what's left of his family is overwhelming.

Sam prompts, “Dean, I said _apple_ ,” and Dean rolls his shoulders. Sam catches his groan under the engine growl.

Eventually Dean replies, “Egg,” and the word sounds scoured out of his throat.

“You can't think of something more exciting than an egg?”

“ _You_ can't think of anything more exciting than an apple?”

“Fine,” Sam huffs. “Alfafa.”

“The fuck is an alfafa?”

“It's a plant, you eat the shoots.”

“It's made up, is what it is.”

Sam drawls, “What-the-fuck-ever,” and Dean tosses him a look in the blurry light, swerving the car just the littlest bit. “ _Jesus_ , Dean,” he groans. “We gotta stop, get some sleep.”

“Avocado.”

“Dean—“

“Not on the menu, Sammy.”

“Yeah, right,” Sam scoffs, implication a slow work in progress through his road-burned brain. Or he just doesn't care; there's increasing shades of that, too. “Oatmeal.”

He watches the tip of Dean's tongue touch his top teeth; a silent L that stretches out: “Lucky Charms.”

“Hardly a food, but okay.”

“You used to love Lucky Charms.”

“Course I did, they're made out of sugar and, and,” and Sam loses his train of thought, too tired to keep steam, “fuckin' rainbows.” Dean laughs, an unfettered, loopy sound that predictably makes Sam's heart stutter. “Dean, seriously, if we don't stop right now, we're gonna _die_ , man.”

Dean must agree because he eases off the gas and brings them to a crawl at the side of the road. Sam grips the seat back before they've even stopped, pulling himself up and over it gracelessly and falling into a heap on the back seat.

Without momentum, the air's still and stifling. All Sam can hear is the creak of leather up front and a million cicadas chirping in the tree-line ten feet away. He still aches, a yearning hollow in him where even this, Dean a near-constant presence, isn't quite enough. The long days without a father turn to weeks and months and sometimes Sam's okay, sometimes he's not.

“Y'okay, Sammy?”

Dean's quiet, like he's miles away.

“M'fine.”

“Liar.”

“Shut up and go to sleep.”

“Tell me what's up first.”

Sam doesn't for a while, but the not-quite-silence of Dean listening feels like it’s opening him up. “The tape made me a little nostalgic, that's all.”

“Yeah, me too,” Dean replies quickly, startlingly honest. “You wanna hug or something?”

“Oh my God, Dean—”

“I mean it, there’s one going if you want it.”

It's fucking embarrassing how much Sam does, in fact, want a hug, but he'd only admit it with a gun to his head and even then death might be preferable. He says nothing, no chance for his voice to betray him, but Dean sits up, the shadow of him over the seat blocking out the moonlight.

Sam glares.

But Dean just studies him ever-so-gently, hard to make out in the dark. Eventually he reaches over, hand slipping through Sam's hair, a brief, sweet shiver of a touch, and then he's laying back down.

“Sleep tight, kiddo.”

Sam swallows the lump in his throat. “Sleep tight, Dean.”

 

~

 

Sam's got a dead arm.

Dean might have, but he'd never let on.

The millionth Ford pickup of the day rolls by the stationary Impala and Sam thinks for a split-second he's seen it before Dean. But life is full of little disappointments and Dean clocks him on the arm again, hard.

“Slow on the draw today, little brother.”

“Shut the fuck up, the AC kept me awake―”

“Yeah, yeah, keep whining about the noisy AC.”

Sam doesn't bother to reply; he's too fucking tired, smeared down in his seat, all across the leather. Seven-thirty in the evening and it's still warm enough to make his skin ripple. This heat is enduring, trapping all his senses.

Dean punches him again.

“Your just makin' up Fords now, I didn't see shit,” Sam complains.

“It was bright red, you couldn't miss it.”

“No, therefore I think you're full of crap.”

“Oh, _therefore_ now, is it?” Dean smirks. “Throw them fancy sentences at me, Sammy.”

Dean's one-hundred percent focused on Sam now and Sam sees the black pickup brake to a halt fifty yards away over his shoulder. He grins, meant to blind-side, and watches Dean cock his head a little before Sam whacks him solid on his bicep so hard it hurts _Sam's_ wrist.

“ _Ah!_ Fucking―”

“Damn, Dean, it's right there, you need a nap or something?”

“Fuck you, little shit.” Dean rubs his arm, bare skin already turning pink.

“I mean, I got this if you wanna head back to the motel.”

“What, and leave you to fall asleep out here so the witch can get the drop on you,” Dean drawls. “Like hell.”

“You don't even know she's a witch.”

White pickup; Sam's fist knocks Dean's own right in the middle over the gearstick and there's a small scuffle, Sam trying to bloody-knuckle his brother while Dean tries to aim a half-assed punch to Sam's side. It's still tender, bruise the span of his palm going sickly yellow from his bottom ribs downwards, a parting gift from a pissy shapeshifter, and Dean glances it just so, just enough for Sam to groan and jerk away.

“What the hell, Sam, you said―”

“I didn't say it'd stand up to an assault.”

“Lemme look.”

Dean reaches out with his eel hands everywhere, slipping past Sam's defences. “Dean, quit it.”

“You quit it, I wanna see―”

“We're in the street!”

Dean deflects both Sam's flailing hands, grips his t-shirt and yanks it up and Sam spares the old man walking his dog along the sidewalk a sheepish, apologetic grin while the guy's head nearly swivels right off.

Sam grits his teeth. “Could you try to look less like you're feeling me up in public please.”

Dean gives him a quick glance, then shakes it away, running two cool knuckles over the ridges of Sam's ribs, underneath to the slope of his side. Sam can't really speak for a few seconds.

“I checked, didn't I? Nothing was broken,” Dean murmurs distractedly. “Does it hurt when you lay on it?”

“No, Dean, it really only hurts when you punch it.”

“Right, shit.” Dean shifts away. “Gotta let me know when you're all healed so I can beat your ass at this properly.”

Sam tugs his shirt back down, spots another black pickup and gets Dean back, right in the ribs.

Dean bites his lip, muffles a little pained sound, and Sam sniggers, exposing his flank because he knows Dean won't retaliate now and it'll piss him off. Sam slouches right down in his seat, still sticking uncomfortably but feeling pretty smug with himself now.

“Postponed. I'll get you in the rematch,” Dean prickles, ridiculous mouth pursed.

The sky's bruising, a canvas of running colors, the sun just a half-slice now. Time passing like it does. Yesterday they drove four-hundred miles in one mostly unfaltering drift just because Sam felt a yearning for the ocean. He gets that way sometimes, a habit that's dying hard, and Dean's happy enough to indulge if it means he gets a good reason to put his foot down for half a day.

Sam never thought about asking for a stopover.

He tries to imagine that one day he'll wake up and biology will bring him to a screeching halt, the urge to bury roots an inexorable itch along with some kind of nagging guilt over this nomad life. Because right now he's all caught up in the ease of it, not _what_ they do, exactly, but the bits in between.

Sam stretches his arm out through his open window, curling his palm up against balmy air like he could hold the weight of it in his hand. Dean watches him in his peripheral vision, all of him, everything, warming with the setting sun; pink then orange, always burning.

“D'you ever think about what car you'd drive if Dad had never gotten this thing?”

Dean pulls in a deliberate, lazy breath, rubbing at a spot where his shirt's ridden up. “A 1967 Chevy Impala, Sam. You never heard of a thing called destiny?”

“You were destined to drive this car?”

“Absolutely.”

“You don't believe I'll go darkside―” Dean predictably tenses, “—but you believe in love at first sight with your car.”

“Yes.”

Sam tips his head back, sprawling so far down his knees hurt. He reaches out and punches Dean in the shoulder just enough to jostle him. Sam figures the contact might unclench him and it does; Dean rolls with it, pushes into it, chasing Sam's proximity.

“You're dumb,” Sam says, soft and heavy. Dense. He feels dense. All full up with unnameable things. “Pretty but dumb, is what you are.”

Dean shifts sideways in his seat, elbow against the back. He pulls a face. “Did you just call me pretty?”

Sam doesn't even know what he's saying, just a mouthful of easy indulgence, words to get Dean to cooperate with his butterfly thoughts. “No. I called you pretty _but dumb_.”

“Sam.”

His throat goes thick, heart sluggish. Dean gets it, Sam knew he would, and he's pretty indeed, wary eyes and soft mouth. Same bit of his hairline Sam pressed a damp grin into in the firelight weeks ago resting against his loosely balled fist.

Sam was drunk off the Cuervo, then the heat, then the miles of eaten-up road. Then Dean making him laugh and laugh. Summer's making him stupid and making Dean freckled and making Sam's hair curl against his neck. It's making his impulses wicked and impossible to pin down.

“Yeah, Dean.”

He thinks about zombies again, unprompted. Definitely a complex. He wonders what Dean's thinking. That used to be a game too, a million years ago, where Sam would just ask and Dean would just tell him; usually tits or grenade launchers or chupacabra. Sometimes Sam, he suspects. All the various ways he might die on Dean's watch.

“What are you thinking right now?” Dean asks— _fuck_ , right in Sam's head, he shoulda known.

It's a pretty loaded question so Dean's feeling somewhat reckless. “About chupacabra.”

“We never did get to kill one of those sons' of bitches.”

“No, we did not.”

“That all?”

“Just chupacabra? No, I was thinkin' about other stuff too.”

Dean nods slowly and doesn't push it and that's okay. It doesn't look like he could phrase what he wants to say any more than Sam can.

“Was it, maybe, that this is a really fucking pointless excuse for a stakeout and we should call it a night?”

Sam huffs a laugh. “Yeah, Dean, that was it.”

“Awesome.” Dean peels himself back, out of the creeping lean into Sam's space he'd been doing. He turns the key in the ignition, humming with the engine rumble, and says, vague and in the middle of checking his blind spot, markedly trying to brush off the sentiment, “I'll take a look at the AC when we get back.”

And Sam grins, God, so painfully fond, and Dean pretends he doesn't see it, eyes fixed on the road. Sam could say it now, just say it: I love you too, man, so fucking much. It'd be the same thing. The same damn thing.

 

~

 

Dean hisses slow through his teeth and Sam's hands tremble just a little, leftover adrenaline finally wringing its way out of his body.

“Sam—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, just shut up,” Sam mutters.

What he means is: yeah, this might hurt like a motherfucker, 'cause they wasted the last of the whiskey on a slow night in Chula Vista and Dean keeps saying he's gonna make a stop at a pharmacy somewhere to restock the Vicodin, their dwindling first aid kit another casualty of the neglectful summer.

Ironically, Sam can just about make out the bright green sign high over the Oak Hill pharmacy from this cliff top, all the town settled in seven AM fog below them.

He can't see as well as he'd like in the threadbare light and Dean's skin pulls under the needle.

Dean’s head falls forward, braced elbows skidding against the Impala roof. The sweat slick on his bare back catches the bleached sun peeking over the horizon in weird ways. It's obscene, all of it, down to Dean bleeding thick globs of blood from his shoulder blade.

Sam hooks him with the needle again, tugging the suture by increments. He runs his empty palm down Dean's spine, wide open and heavy and shameless and Dean shudders long and hard, naked dip of his lower back a perfect fit for Sam's hand.

“How many you puttin' in?” Dean asks, a little slurred, drawn out; Sam doesn't know what that means without seeing his face.

“Dozen more'll do it, I reckon,” Sam tells him. Dean rolls his hips, groaning, and Sam's hands slip and twitch, lose track of their purpose. “Count them with me.”

“What?”

“Count them, c’mon,” Sam demands, threading Dean’s skin again. “Like—”

“Dad used to do, no.”

Sam’s concentration fits and starts, gets refracted and dazzled by the memory of a shotgun loaded with rock salt accidentally turned on his brother by a freaked-out college kid caught up in their hunt. Dean’s reflexes spinning him, stinging slabs of salt lodging right deep into his back.

He’d called the kid a dipshit and the kid had cried and then Dean had felt compelled to apologize through his gritted teeth, murderous and wracked with tremors.

“Used to calm you down,” Sam tells him, like Dean didn’t already know that. “Helps me, too.” He grips the needle tight enough to embed a narrow groove in his fingerprints; push, tug, pull. “ _One_ ,” and then, “ _two_ ,” to show Dean how it’s done.

Dean drawls, “Freddy’s coming for you.”

Sam was six when Dean showed him that movie, the bastard. All his nightmares for a month were shook apart by Dean waking him up with that stupid fucking poem.

“Not what I meant, Dean—”

“Gettin' cramp, here, man, hurry it up.”

Sam crowds closer, anchors Dean with all four fingers and a thumb wrapped all the way around his uninjured shoulder. There's something like three inches of warm air between Sam's whole front and Dean's entire back and it's an incomprehensible thing to know right now. He could trap Dean good and still against the car if he wanted, quit his damn contrary squirming. It'd really be something.

He pulls two more sutures through Dean's raw skin—“ _Three, four, better lock your door_ ,”—and Dean taps out a spastic rhythm with his fingertips on the car roof.

The next goes too deep; Sam paying more attention to Dean's hand than his own.

“ _Fuck_ , Sam.”

It's a half breath, half moan that comes out of Dean's mouth and Sam spits, “Jesus,” and can't figure out which way either of their neurons are firing. “Sorry, sorry, just a few more.”

Dean swallows hard, throat clicking and chased up by a gasp.

“Five,” Sam goes on slowly, when he thinks Dean’s ready. “Six.”

“Grab a crucifix.”

“Seven.” Seven tugs a ragged edge of flesh and the noise in the back of Dean’s throat is small and low. “Eight.” And then, when Dean doesn’t reply, “ _Eight,_ Dean, c’mon, you started it.”

“Gonna stay up late.”

“Nine. Ten.”

“Never sleep again,” Dean grinds out. “Two more and we’ve run outta poem.”

Sam counts them silently instead, putting the final stitches in place, ugly little lines skewering Dean's skin. He grabs their last tiny bottle of rubbing alcohol and wets Dean's torn-up t-shirt with it, pressing it over the spattering of deep wounds.

Dean exhale beats out of him like the thwack of a belt, all of him tensing, and Sam's empathy is in overdrive or something, the angry red of Dean's puckered skin making him all sore under his ribs. He drops his forehead to the back of Dean's neck and mouths something that might be an apology there.

And Dean reacts, throwing a hand back, making a fist in Sam's hair.

It's Dean at his most thoughtless. Dean at his own impulsive mercy. It only lasts a second but Sam's startled by the unrestrained want of it, his gut wrenching like a knife twisting in there.

His breath skitters down Dean's spine, raising visible bumps. He thinks: this is why they _haven't_ —this is what Sam's fucking hesitating for, the reason Dean isn't pushing. Just the simple thought of dragging his lips around to Dean's throat right now feels like it might cleave this entire cliff in two.

Dean's fingers tug clumsily through Sam's hair and then they're gone and Sam straightens right up, mouth as far away from Dean's fluttering pulse as he can get it at this proximity.

“How's it look?” Dean asks, scratchy as hell.

Sam checks one last time, feeling more intimately acquainted with the curve of Dean's shoulder blade than he has any damn right to be. “Yeah, you'll live.”

“Great, it was really touch and go there for a while,” Dean says, dry enough to bring some much needed levity to the situation.

Sam huffs. He backs way up, tossing Dean's shirt into the back of the car, and Dean's flushed when he turns around, looks downright high.

He experiments a little, rolling his shoulder, and gives Sam a satisfied little nod. “Not bad.”

“Wow, don’t go overboard, will you?”

Dean grins, blinding. “Gee, Sammy, you’re the best.”

“I _know_ , right?”

The grin refines, softening out. There’s blood streaked around the side of Dean’s ribs and Sam’s attention catches for a little while between Dean’s lovely curved mouth and Dean’s sorely stained skin. Pleasing and not-so. Both highly commonplace.

Sam huffs a laugh, a little self-deprecating.

“Tell you what, though,” Dean starts and with gusto, heading to the trunk to presumably hunt down another shirt. “Last time I give a damn weapon to a civilian.”

“Not the kid’s fault you looked like a ghost.”

Dean levels him a flat glare around the trunk lid, ironically looking pretty ghost-like right now. “Like a dead sixty-five year old mad cat lady.”

“He musta thought so.” Sam shrugs. “Hey, you gotta let me put a bandage over the stitches before you put—” A pack of bandages sails over Sam’s urgently ducked head, “—your shirt on. Okay then.”

The shirt comes after, Sam throwing up a finally steady hand to catch it.

 

~

 

Dean pulled scissors.

Sam repeats that to himself, over and over.

Police fucking everywhere in this podunk shithole town where one murder counts for the coming of the end times. One of them had to stand watch and there's a grave to be dug and Dean— _Dean_ lost.

Except Sam's thinking Dean got off lucky.

“Little odd, young fella like you hangin' around a graveyard at two in the morning.”

“No, sir,” Sam tells Officer Fergus sheepishly, carefully slipping off the Impala hood and herding them around the side, away from the number plates. “I find it peaceful out here, is all.”

“Like I said.” Fergus narrows his grey eyes, scrunches up his magnificently bearded face. “Little odd.”

“I'm a—” First word on the tip of his tongue is _enthusiast_ , but who the fuck says that standing out front of a graveyard at two AM. “Writer. Horror. I like to uh, y'know, get in the mood, get the ideas flowing.”

“We had one of those _satanic cult_ problems around here a few years ago,” Fergus tells him with emphasis and Sam has to brutally lock down every facial muscle he owns to not roll his eyes. “So I think I'll take a look around if that's all dandy with you.”

“I don't recall seeing any satanic cultists around, officer,” Sam says quickly.

Fergus gives him a glare. “Seems to me that's exactly what a satanic cultist would say, huh?”

Where the fuck is his brother? Dean revels in lying to people in authority, the more audacious and convoluted the better as far as he's concerned.

“Okay, but if I was a worshipper of Satan, wouldn't I be, I dunno, dressed in black robes? Maybe carrying blasphemous iconography?”

“What d'you think this is, boy, a movie?”

Sam shrugs, honestly getting whiplash. “Um, guess I don't know much about satanic cults.”

Fergus eyes Sam up, from bottom to top disdainfully, and like something out of anactual movie _,_ Dean chooses this moment to come swaggering out of the shadows, t-shirt sweat-sticking to him and spattered in grave dirt.

He freezes comically, managing to haul the shovel cocked over his shoulder off into the bushes before Fergus spins on the spot, startled.

“What on my poor grandmother's spirit is goin' on here?”

Dean looks from Sam to Fergus and back again, mouth hanging open, taking a stalling breath, and Sam has never thought so fast in his entire life.

“I'm sorry, officer,” he mumbles, slipping out to stand between Fergus and his brother. “You were right to be suspicious. I lied.”

“I thought so. Come on, spit it out.”

“I'm actually out here meeting my, uh, my _friend_.”

“Your _friend_?” Fergus asks, and Sam sees him measure Dean in the same up-and-down way but with an added raised eyebrow.

Dean slides up to Sam's side, slides a hand around Sam's hip, and Sam can hear the hot streak of a grin in his voice. “His mother doesn't approve of our _friendship_.”

Sam's gotta wonder what stereotype Fergus holds dear about gay guys that he accepts Dean looking like he does right now, but he thanks whatever God is out there for small town ignorance when Fergus gives them little more than an awkward nod and a stilted _don't let me catch you boys loitering again or there'll be trouble_ before he turns tail and leaves them to it.

Dean falls against the side of the car, head tipped back to the sky, and he whoops a laugh, utterly delighted.

“It's not fucking funny, Dean, he almost went in there and caught you balls-deep in a freshly torched grave.”

“I was long finished, chill out.”

Sam jitters, the feel of Dean's hand a ghost on his hip. “Man, I hate lying to the cops.”

“I dunno,” Dean sniggers. “I thought that was pretty well done.”

“Yeah, you would.”

Dean wets his bottom lip, eyes too bright, too manic; he's just spent the better part of an hour slogging out aggression with a shovel and setting fire to stuff and Sam knows how deranged it makes him.

“And what exactly are you implying there, Sammy?”

Sam needs a minute, a distraction; Dean's an impossible menace like this, unable to be reasoned with. He leans past Dean's side towards the open car window, grabbing a bottle of water from the passenger seat.

“That you enjoy fucking with the police far too much.”

He unscrews the lid but apparently the excitement's made Sam reckless as shit too, because instead of handing the bottle to Dean like he imagines himself doing, he throws a hefty splash of water in Dean's face.

He sputters, back already against the Impala so he's got nowhere to escape to. “What the—”

“You wanna drag grave dirt all into the car?”

“You wanna get hit?”

Sam splashes him again, leaning in to scrub a hand through Dean's hair, telling him in a loaded voice, “You're a mess.”

It's all such a fucking stupid idea, Sam's hands on his wet brother, the way Dean only half fights him, lunatic grin curling up the corner of his mouth.

He makes a swipe for the bottle but Sam holds it too high and now Dean’s looking up with water slick on his bottom lip.

Too easy. Too easy to get caught up like this, all of these delirious, ungovernable moments. Sam takes a half-step into Dean's space and thumbs a dirt smudge on his neck and Dean's breathing hitches like a knife in a notch. Water sizzles off the hot concrete, drip-dripping off his brother's body.

If Officer Fergus could see them now, Sam thinks for a dizzying second, and then he clamps down on it, inhaling the smell of smoke from Dean—burned a body, he just _burned a body_.

“We should probably haul ass,” Sam says thickly.

Dean gives him a sly look, not quite ready to let Sam entirely drop this; they keep moving in ever-tightening circles and one day—Sam thinks it's gonna be soon. Thinks he might even be ready for it, drawing it out like this a kind of torturous thrill but he’s almost past his boiling point.

“Sure I'm clean enough?”

Sam swallows. “You'll do for now.”

“Great, then gimmie the keys, let’s rock.”

Sam doesn’t bite down on his lip but it’s a near thing. “Play me for them.”

Dean narrows his eyes. Poised to strike, Sam deliriously thinks. His brother makes a ready fist slowly, fingers elegantly curling—the son of a bitch.

Sam doesn’t know why he pulls paper but he does, like he’s actually Goddamn psychic or something, and he covers Dean’s rock, too fucking fascinated by his whole hand spread over Dean’s balled fist and then some.

Dean lets it stay there, seizing every bit of Sam’s attention while he craftily snatches away the water bottle from Sam’s slack grip.

He wraps his mouth around it, pointedly gulping down the last of the water, and Sam gives him a look that he carefully schools as haughty but feels anything but.

“Getting in the car, Sam?”

For a second—a fucking whole feverish second—and then it passes; just barely, close enough to touch, drag its heels, but gone nonetheless.

Sam steps away. He won’t again.

 

~

 

Dean would never let someone who wasn't Sam sit on his car like this.

It's one of those important concepts that occurs to Sam constantly but only blind-sides him rarely. And when it does, it turns into a real bugbear; an idea Sam can't shake or unwrap in his head.

Why? Because Sam's special. What? What does that even mean? Dean prefers Sam to everyone else in the world, sure, but Sam already knows that. There's something differentabout the way Sam lounges on the hood, back to the windscreen and boots against the metal.

Sam hears the crack-fizz of two caps coming off and Dean hands him a beer, perching on the edge and awkwardly angling an arm back so Sam can knock their bottles together.

He doesn't know what time it is. Some hours past midday, hot enough but not asphalt-melting, too-thick-to-breathe, apocalyptic hot. He thinks it might be a Thursday.

“So, if we keep on at this rate we should hit St George by the time it gets _dark_ dark.”

“ _Dark_ dark.”

“Yeah, y'know.”

Yeah, Sam does. “I want ribs,” he says, sounding a little spoiled but it's only because he's too contemplative for excessive verbiage and Dean nods anyway so it's not like it matters.

There's sweat dampening the neckline at the back of Dean's grey over-shirt and Sam stretches one arm out, pressing the chilled bottle there against Dean's skin. He flinches, shoulders hunching for a second, and then huffs, cocking his head a little, angle of his jaw amused.

“ _Unfortunately_ , spontaneous human combustion is a real thing,” Sam starts and Dean shakes his head. He never did love this game like Sam did.

“We're not twelve.”

Sam drawls, “Indulge me,” in a voice he hadn't meant to pitch that low. Dean's profile doesn't quite connect their lines of sight but Sam can see the sweep of his eyelashes side-on; low then up like Dean's deliberating, all purposeful motion.

“ _Fortunately_ , scientists proved spontaneous human combustion was bullcrap,” he says eventually. “Unfortunately, they overlooked something.”

“Fortunately, it only happens to guys who freckle.”

Dean elbows back blindly, glancing off Sam's raised knee. “Bitch.”

“That's not the game, Dean.”

“ _Unfortunately_ , you're a bitch.”

“Fortunately, you still let me sit on your car, though, so what's with that?”

Dean finally turns to face him, hiking his thigh onto the hood. “Huh?”

“You go fiery wrath of Hell on the entire Department of Transportation if this thing so much as goes over a pothole but you let me put my feet on her.”

It really has been bugging Sam for a while today, to the point where it kinda sounds like he's accusing Dean of something nefarious.

And Dean looks genuinely baffled, it's unnerving and dangerously compelling and a ton of other things Sam's hitting a stumbling block over, right along with why the second Dad handed Dean those keys, Sam was lounging all over his car like a cat rolling all over its stuff.

“I sit on it too,” Dean seems to decide on.

Sam counters immediately, no idea why he's pushing this issue. “Not like I do, though.”

Dean narrows his eyes, mouth falling open incredulously. Sam doesn't blame him; his thoughts are so roaming some days, so blinding and corruptible others. Dean pointedly shuffles himself up the hood to lean back against the glass, knocking into Sam's shoulder to emphasize his stubbornness.

“There, happy now?” he asks.

Sam may as well have said _get up here_ or something equally as suggestive, because now Dean's this close Sam feels drunk again, syphoning up Dean's body heat, obsessed with the fading touch of sunburn across his nose and cheeks. His Goddamn summer freckles.

Sam just stares.

“Or d'you want me to tell you to get your ass off my car, Sam?” Dean asks, coarse and goading and it sounds dirty for some reason. Might be the proximity, the feel of Dean's words instead of just the sound.

Sam missteps, preparing to say something probably terrible and life-altering, but the tension in his back goes weird and instead he slides half off the hood, barely getting a leg under him before he hits the grass in a crumpled heap.

Dean abruptly throws his head back and laughs, holding his ribs and just―mesmerizing, irritating as all hell. Sam aches with a relentless compulsion and _knows_ he's about to wreck the fragile balance, finally conclude the aimless drift of this summer.

Dean's been waiting for it. Sam's been weighing the scale of their entire timeless existence.

He rounds the hood, knees to the fender, and feels his tongue press into his bottom lip, sees Dean looking up and up. Sam knows only one logical conclusion right now; he grips Dean's jeans tight at the ankle and yanks.

Dean yelps, falling into an obscene sprawl against the metal, barely propped up on his elbows. Legs spread and shirt ridden up.

“Didn't think you'd take it so literally, Sammy,” he smirks, real cocky for someone spread out like a bagel topping, but he's quivering, too; breathy, and the tic in his jaw telling Sam he's on the very edge of his last nerve here.

He knows far too much about this man, he realizes. Somehow it’s never fucking enough.

Sam’s hands burn on the hood, sink in his brother’s hair.

Dean’s mouth shudders a breath against Sam’s jaw, all of him arching up, and Sam rolls their foreheads together a little desperately, feeling utterly heat-stricken and like his heart might explode in a shower of cartoon feathers.

Dean huffs an awestruck little laugh and Sam nods the affirmative, rubbing his nose into Dean's cheek, all intimate and deceptively non-lethal. Like this right here isn't five-hundred flavors of ruination.

There’s sweat pooled in the dip of Dean’s throat, faint engine heat and flushed bodies and the sun beating down on the back of Sam's neck bleeding into him.

“M'gonna—y'know,” Sam mutters.

“Fucking kiss me, right?”

“Yeah, that.”

It's Dean that tips his head, though. Dean that parts his mouth over Sam's bottom lip. Dean that fists a shaky hand in Sam's hair, using Sam like a beam to hang off. It's _Dean_ that licks into his mouth and holy fuck _he's kissing his brother._

Sam's chest expands, all the startled air pulled in through his nose on one smooth inhale, and all he can smell and taste and feel is Dean. Shockingly soft, Dean dragging out a counterpoint to his hammering heartbeat; rhythmic and wet, a sweet slick-slide.

“Sam, Sammy—” Dean starts, mouthing Sam's lips, kissing him some more. Sam hums, _what?_ but Dean either forgot or he just wanted to say Sam's name. Say _Sammy_.

Sam's skin breaks out in shivers. He presses a groan into Dean's mouth, presses Dean into the car, pushing a knee against the fender to get leverage. Well and truly making out with his brother on the hood of the Impala.

This is not what Dad bought her for, he thinks hysterically, and it's right up there with him and Dean in their plaid and bodywarmers and fold-out chairs, forever together either on or by the side of the road, so it’s not out of the realm of usual that Sam’s grinning.

Dean, too. Grinning against Sam's jaw, shaking his head, taking little bites out of Sam's skin with the gentle scrape of his teeth.

He paws Sam's hair out of both their faces, cocks his head back and gazes up, all warmth and sunburn and crinkled eyes. Sam's never seen his brother look so sweet.

“Well,” Sam says.

Dean agrees, “Well.”

He feels over-stimulated and therefore intensely tactile, like the night spent by the road with his nostalgia; all of him aching to touch his brother in all these important, indefinable ways. If Dean wouldn't fight him, Sam'd scoop him right off the hood and wring the hell out of him like a dishcloth.

“We could, uh,” Dean croaks—Sam's stolen the substance of his voice right out of him. “We could still make St. George by _dark_ dark. Unless you wanna, y'know, keep doin' this.”

Sam considers him intently. “Don't wanna stop doing this, to be honest. At all.”

Dean breathes, “Oh, thank God,” and hauls Sam back down, gripping the back of his shirt in frantic fists and dragging him up onto the car, nowhere for Sam to go but where Dean wants him.

“Do this for a while,” Dean murmurs between Sam dipping his tongue into his mouth. “Keep on this road—”

Sam pins him harder. “You're OCD about roads, I heard you the first time.”

“Hit St. George, get a motel room.”

“Keep doin' this?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Awesome, now shut up so we can keep doin’ this.”

Dean’s got no choice, really, when Sam takes him by the mouth again, unwilling to give him the breath back to talk.


End file.
